Women Entering the Shingle Mills
A new industrial experiment in Aberdeen shifts packing labor to women, marking a departure from the male-dominated workforce of the early timber industry.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Grays Harbor Commercial Company has seen the Getchell shingle mill and gone it one better. They have just completed an addition to their large mill for making shingles, and will operate the knotting and packing departments entirely with girls and women, under the charge of W. H. Belles. This is a new departure for the coast, although practiced quite extensively in the East. It gives opportunity for employment to families where there are no boys, and will be of material benefit to them by opening up another avenue to women, the present field being limited in this new country. The work is light and such as can readily be done by girls and women. It would be to the advantage of all if the boys and men would give up this light work altogether to the girls and women and get out and clear up a few acres of land.
“It gives opportunity for employment to families where there are no boys, and will be of material benefit to them by opening up another avenue to women.”
This rare acknowledgment of women entering the industrial workforce highlights the gendered division of labor in the Pacific Northwest timber towns of the 1890s, where 'women's work' was strictly defined and often justified by the necessity of survival in a boom-and-bust economy.
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